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Seek Out the Lost | ||||||
“Be friendly with everyone. Don't be proud and feel that you are smarter than others. Make friends with ordinary people.” (Romans 12:16 CEV) In The Message paraphrase, 2 Corinthians 5:20b is rendered: “Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.” That’s the message we’re to take to the world, yet often we limit our influence by seeking and maintaining friendships exclusively among other believers. Jesus, on the other hand, sought out the lost, deliberately becoming friends with those who needed a friend in God. The Bible says that when the Pharisees saw Jesus keeping company with the community’s great unwashed, “they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. ‘What kind of example is this from your teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riffraff?’ Jesus, overhearing, shot back, ‘Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: “I’m after mercy, not religion.” I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders’” (Matthew 9:10-13 MSG). Jesus knew who he was, according to God’s design; Jesus knew whose he was, according to God’s truth; and Jesus knew his purpose for being here on Earth. All this allowed him to relax and ignore what others thought or said about him. It meant Jesus wasn’t worried when others accused him of being a friend of sinners (Luke 19:7) because he was doing exactly what the Father sent him to do: persuade men and women to make peace with God (2 Corinthians 5:20). Likewise, we’re to represent Jesus, speaking on his behalf to those still on the “outside.” Yet some of us are so isolated and disconnected from unbelievers that we rarely have any meaningful conversations with them. The tendency is that the longer we’re believers, the more insulated we become from unbelievers and perhaps the more uncomfortable we become with them. The result: We no longer have friends who are non-believers.
Jesus’ actions suggest that our witness to a non-believer starts with friendship: We earn the right to share the Gospel through relationship. The old cliché is a cliché because it’s true: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Those who have yet to become friends with God are just like you and me, looking for deep, true, supportive friendships, sometimes especially during the Christmas season. The Apostle Paul encourages us to find common ground with non-believers: “I do this to get the Gospel to them and also for the blessing I myself receive when I see them come to Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:22-23 LB). Finding common ground is an act of friendship; it guides us to look for the positive instead of the negative in those outside the faith. When Jesus met the woman at the well, he pointed to what they had in common rather than the things he could condemn (John 4). As a result, she not only became friends with God; she also brought her friends and family into the presence of Jesus. What does this mean? · Do you know who you are? This is critical for you to become friends with non-believers. Otherwise, you may overly worry about what others believers think of you, or you may drift into sinful behaviors because you become concerned about what non-believers think about you. Jesus knew who he was and whose he was, and Jesus knew God’s purpose for his life. This allowed him to relax and ignore what others thought or said about him. · Love people, not their values. God loves people (John 3:16), but that doesn’t mean he loves the values of the world. The Apostle John warns us not to “love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father” (1 John 2:15 MSG). · Building friendships requires: · Courtesy: “Always talk pleasantly and with a flavor of wit but be sensitive to the kind of answer each one requires.” (Colossians 4:6 NJB) · Frequency: You have to spend time with non-believers in order to become friends with them. · Authenticity: “Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it.” (Romans 12:9a MSG) · Be friendly with everyone: “Don't be proud and feel that you are smarter than others. Make friends with ordinary people.” (Romans 12:16 CEV)
Jon Walker is managing editor of Rick Warren’s Daily Hope Devotionals and senior editor at Pastors.com. He was vice president of communications at Purpose Driven Ministries.
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God Wired Us to Be on Mission | ||||||
"Only those who give away their lives for my sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live.” (Mark 8:35 TLB)
Why don’t we feel more fulfilled? Far too many people are asking themselves that question. We’re not happy, we’re not satisfied — in fact, we’re miserable. Why? In his book Rich, Free, and Miserable, sociologist John Brueggemann shared a great story that illustrated why. Climbing Mount Everest is one of the challenges that inspire people to do something big. Lots of people try, even though nearly 10 percent of the people who do, die in the process. Many of the corpses still line the path up the mountain. Yet people still want to climb the mountain — though it has no real redeeming social value. A few years back one climber, David Sharp, was clearly in trouble on the mountain. There were 40 climbers who noticed his obvious need but passed him that day. He died on Mount Everest because none of the other climbers were willing to put their personal goal on hold to help him. That’s us. Our own personal drive to have more, be more, and do more causes us to lose sight of what really matters. But that isn’t how God wired us. Life isn’t about what you make, who you know, or what you do. Life is all about love — loving God and loving others. Jesus tells us in Mark 8:35, "Only those who give away their lives for my sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live” (TLB). God wired you in a way that you’ll never be happy unless you’re giving your life away in his work. You were made for something greater than yourself. The Bible calls this your mission in life. Significance doesn’t come from status, salary, or sex. It comes from service. Only by giving your life away can you feel that your life has significance.
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Your Assignment Comes from God Himself | ||||||
“In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.” (John 17:18 MSG) If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, God has given you a mission in this world. You’re not here to just take up space; you’re not here to just strive after your own personal goals. You have an assignment from God himself. Once you’re in the family, your life changes. You have a new reason for living. Your life isn’t about you anymore; it’s about God’s mission. And your mission fits into God’s mission for all of history. God created everything in the universe because he wanted a family. He didn’t need Earth. He didn’t need the other planets. He didn’t need the stars. He created all of it because he knew some of us would willingly choose to be a part of his family. The mission God gave Jesus he now gives to the Body of Christ — the Church. He wants us to help get other people into his family. Jesus said it like this: “In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world” (John 17:18 MSG). Once we know Jesus, we have to go! We must tell our friends and families about him. But we can’t stop there. God has never made anyone he doesn’t want saved. He loves everyone — across the entire globe.
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Your Mission Comes from God | ||||||
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20 NIV) You have a mission; we all do. When we become a part of God’s family, our mission is given to us by God himself: to help others join that family, too. Since God loves everyone, there is no one in the entire world he doesn’t want to be in his family. Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20 NIV). When Jesus tells the Church to go to “all nations,” he isn’t talking about countries; he’s talking about people groups. He tells us to go to every people group and make disciples. Today, there are 13,000 people groups in the world; 6,350 of those people groups have churches among them, but less than 2 percent of the population is Christian. Christianity has spread to every major language group in the world. Yet there are 3,800 people groups that, 2,000 years after Jesus’ death on the cross, still have no church in their language. Why? We simply don’t care enough. We’re too busy with our own lives to care about people who are dying spiritually. Instead of telling those 3,800 people groups about the love of Jesus, we tell them by default to “go to Hell.” Certainly, it’s a huge task. God’s mission is global. But it’s not mission impossible; it’s mission inevitable. The Great Commission will be fulfilled. It’s a certainty. In fact, the Bible gives us a picture of its fulfillment in Revelation 7:9: “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” One day there will be people from every language group in the world standing before the throne of Jesus. The only question for us is, will our generation be the ones to do it? Or will we give up our responsibility and pass it on to someone else? Will another generation be the ones who get the privilege of fulfilling God’s great mission that he created the whole universe for in the first place? What might keep you from fulfilling your mission? What is God asking you to do this Christmas season to help fulfill the Great Commission?
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